Thanks! Closing My Eyes Just Makes It Worse, Boston, MA

While I sympathize with your trauma, as a dog I just can’t relate. Giants are so reticent to discuss poop. Until they get old. Then that’s all they talk about.

Not so with dogs. Poop is our CNN. It’s how we stay informed. It’s our primary topic of discussion along with anything rodent related and the films of Woody Allen. (He’s a genius!)

It’s a mystery how a memory stick would end up in a leopard seal’s poop. Also a mystery: What is a leopard seal? Is it a rodent? I’ll bet it’s a rodent!

While wild animal “scat” can be revealing, some secrets dogs were not meant to know.My Giant Intern Per Se explains that a leopard seal, or Hydrurga Leptonyx (Latin for “I ate a what, now?”) is Antarctica’s second largest seal species with access to a laptop.

After removing the memory stick from the poop– or “scat” as scientists call it, which isn’t much of an improvement– researchers carefully washed off all the good smelling stuff. On the remarkably well-preserved drive they found the vacationers’ photos of seal pups and a video shot from a kayak.

Unfortunately, there were no videos of the leopard seal “scatting” out the drive, which would have been interesting. But Per Se assures me that capability requires a far more advanced digestive system. Still, imagine how cool!

Out of scientific curiosity and a supreme confidence that dogs are better than leopard seals, I brought this incident to the attention of the dog park, posing the question, “What have you ‘scatted’ of interest?”

LABRADOODLE: “Recently, or…?”

CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIEL: “A paycheck. I don’t know what that is or how it got there. Just don’t do it!”

BERNESE MOUNTAIN DOG: “Once, I scatted a mountaineer. He’d been missing for a week!”